Consumer fanboys confuse brand identity with their own

Have you ever found yourself frothing at the fingertips while
explaining why someone doesn't deserve to use an iPhone because of
the offender's deeply flawed sense of aesthetics? Have you been the
type to declare that those who don't use Android are cylons
who are under mind control from Cupertino? Or are you Peter Bright,
turning up your nose at all of us while you wax on about the
unappreciated genius of the Windows 7 Phone?

You may think you're defending your favourite platform, because
it's just that good. But, according to a recently published study out of the University of Illinois, you
may instead be defending yourself because you view criticisms of
your favourite brand as a threat to your self image. The study,
which will be published in the next issue of the Journal of
Consumer Psychology, examines the strength of consumer-brand
relationships, concluding that those who have more knowledge of and
experience with a brand are more personally impacted by incidents
of brand "failure."

The researchers performed two experiments, one on a group of 30
women and another on 170 undergraduate students, in order to see
whether the subjects' self esteem was tied to the general ratings
of various brands. Those who had high self-brand connections, or
SBC -- that is, those who follow, research, or simply like a
certain brand -- were the ones whose self esteem suffered the most
when their brands didn't do well or were criticised. Those with low
SBC remained virtually unaffected on a personal level.

The residual effect of this is that those with high SBCs tend to
discount negative news about their favourite brands, and sometimes
even ignore it altogether in favour of happier thoughts.

"Consumers are highly resistant to brand failure to the point that they're willing to rewrite
history," business administration professor and researcher Tiffany
Barnett White said in a statement. "It not only explains why so
many Toyota customers ignored the negative brand information in the
aftermath of the highly publicised recalls, it also accounts for
why they're quick to defend the company and why they would want to
re-write history in a more positive way."

The paper notes that its conclusions challenge some assumptions
from previous literature on brand connections. It had been assumed
that brands are treated more like an interpersonal relationship and
that brand loyalty is indicative of relationship strength. Instead,
the Illinois researchers believe people treat brands as they treat
themselves, leading users to feel more affected by brand failure
instead of less.

"Because the brand is seen as a part of the self by virtue of
being intimately tied to the self, failure on the part of the brand
is experienced as a personal failure," reads the paper. "Therefore,
in an effort to maintain a positive self-view, high SBC individuals
react defensively to brand failure by evaluating the brand
favorably despite its poor performance.

Has anyone else already begun to sift through the comments of
our platform-specific articles to see who's feeling bad about
themselves lately and who's not?

Comments

It seems to me that they are over analysing it. Could there not be a simpler possible reason (although it is related). If you buy a product (an expensive one at that) and that product turns out be rubbish then you look an idiot, feel you have been ripped off and are afraid that other people will judge you for your poor judgement ergo, you defend your purchase to the hilt.

Iain Forbes

Aug 18th 2011

Although I find the idea completely alien as far as my own opinions, possibly down to my continuing use of microsoft products (after all nobody loves microsoft) and my dislike of the anticompetitive practices of the maker of my smartphone, I have seen this sort of behaviour from those who do seem to have that strange brand loving bug, so I feel it may have merit and possibly I'm just a low SBC person...

Rick

Aug 19th 2011

I think the link is most pronounced when the company is very fashionable, these tendencies are most pronounced in sycophantic Apple fans and interestingly in their polar opposite those who aggressively oppose apple.I think it is more interesting to look at the flawed images people buy into for e.g. all the liberal conservationist lefties who buy into Apples freedom to do what you want and the clean white lines of efficiency. When Apple as a technology company are incredibly restrictive with their products and one of the worlds largest polluters.